If Paris Saint-Germain wins the UEFA Champions League this season, it will be nothing short of incredible.
Consider the fact that PSG will have last played a competitive match on March 11, and even if they play a few friendlies during the summer, they may not play another competitive match until late July or early August. That’s five months in between playing a real match.
The long layoff will have an impact on player fitness and any rhythm they had is completely gone. While the rest of Europe’s top teams wrap up their domestic seasons, PSG sits at home and watches, waiting for their chance to return to the pitch.
You can certainly take a negative approach to the situation but in an interview with Emedia, Idrissa Gueye prefers to shine a more positive light on what is facing his squad in the quarter-finals of the Champions League and hopefully beyond.
“Inevitably, we have to pay a lot of attention to the recovery, especially since we stayed for a long time without training, without seeing each other, without having competition.”
“So, we will have to see how we will come back, how the players will get back in shape or with a little weight, we do not yet know. But we should not ask questions. Once we have resumed training, we must be ready to resume immediately and fight to go as far as possible even if we are a little disadvantaged by the fact that the other championships have resumed for some time.”
“They will have a lot more competition than us but if we try to turn that into our favor, that is to say not to ask questions, to say the others have started again and not us, we can turn that on our side, tell ourselves that we will arrive much cooler than the others because they will have played a lot of games, and that we will be cooler to put them in difficulty and win as many games as possible.”
Injuries and fatigue could impact PSG’s potential opponent and there’s no doubt that the Ligue 1 champions will have fresher legs when the Champions League rolls around in August. If manager Thomas Tuchel can get the tactics right, PSG could finally achieve the European glory they’ve been searching for since Qatar Sports Investments took over in 2011.
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